The Other Side of the Styx
by solnishka
Summary: Reynauld comes back from the dead. Or at least, some of him does, and Dismas tries to pick up the pieces.
1. Chapter 1

"Grave robber!" the heiress shouted. "Come to the graveyard! Bring your shovel!"

The grave robber looked up from where she and the highwayman were lounging in the shade of one of the hamlet's wizened elm trees, talking and half-heartedly sharpening their knives. "Wha…"

"_Now!_" the heiress yelled. Her hair was escaping its pins and loose strands stirred in the breeze. Her wan face was flushed, and the light of either fever or madness glowed behind her sunken eyes. The grave robber shut her mouth and tucked her knives back into their sheaths, grabbing her shovel and running after the woman.

Dismas followed. What else was there to do?

The heiress fled through the hamlet's twisting streets like a woman possessed, slipping on the slick cobbles. She shoved the barkeep aside when he stepped in front of her and dashed through a mud puddle without seeming to notice the filth that splattered over her skirt and stockings. She shrieked when the grave robber's hat blew off her head and the woman stopped and turned back to pick it up, a wordless cry of rage and horrific impatience, and the grave robber had no choice but to jerk back around and continue after her. Dismas stooped and grabbed it in passing.

"Here," the heiress said, running through the graveyard's open gate and pointing at one plot. "Dig here. _Dig, for the Light's sake, before it's too late_."

The grave robber, caught in the heiress' net of feverish desperation, obeyed and wordlessly began shoveling. The heiress fell to her knees and began scratching at the raw earth with her hands, flinging fistfuls of it behind her like a dog. Dismas entered the graveyard, panting and carrying the grave robber's hat.

"That… that's Reynauld's spot," he said.

"We have to get him out!" the heiress said. She stumbled to her feet and lunged past the highwayman, towards the caretaker who had arrived carrying another shovel. She wrenched it from his grasp and fell in beside the grave robber, digging frantically.

"_Help us_," she said, stopping only long enough to turn and look at Dismas and the caretaker. More of her hairpins had come loose; locks of hair hung around and in front of her sweating face, and in her stained clothes she looked utterly deranged. "He'll suffocate if we don't get him out!"

"He's dead."

"No! The ancestor told me he's alive! He's alive and we have to get him out!"

Dismas pulled off his overcoat and grabbed the shovel from her, digging with an unmatchable fury. Slowly, far too slowly, the dirt was pulled away, and a simple pinewood coffin incised with a cross was revealed. The lid had been nailed shut.

"Out of the way," the grave robber said. She pulled her pickaxe from her belt and started hammering at the lid. The wood began to splinter beneath the repeated blows. The heiress paced like a caged lion. Dismas held his breath. The grave robber's pick punctured the lid, and she began to lever it back and forth to enlarge the hole.

Something shifted inside the coffin, and then a gauntleted fist punched through the wood, lifting the grave robber's pick with it.

"Reynauld!" Dismas called. The heiress started to sob with relief. Dismas didn't join her, but a huge smile broke across his face.

There was no answer from within the coffin.

The grave robber abandoned the hole she had made, which was now much bigger, and began working at the places around it. Slowly, it widened, until there was an opening large enough for the crusader to climb out of.

Dismas' heartbeat seemed to stutter in his chest at the sight of the man, and all the air squeezed out of his lungs. The crusader's armor was dented and scratched, and the highwayman could see the crushed portion of the cuirass where the steel had ultimately failed its wearer beneath a mace's blow. Reynauld had died leaning on Dismas, choking on his own blood as his broken ribs ripped his lung open further and further, and Dismas had felt the moment that the crusader's heart stopped and he slowly toppled into the dirt—and yet here Reynauld was, climbing out of his own grave without any sign of hindrance or pain.

"Reynauld!" Dismas called again.

The crusader turned towards him, but said nothing. Dismas waited, feeling apprehension creep in the seconds passed. His smile faded.

"What's wrong, Reynauld?"

The crusader stood at the edge of the grave, unmoving and silent as a statue. Dismas looked at the heiress.

The woman shook her head in response to the highwayman's wordless question. "I… I don't know," she said. "The ancestor told me I could get one of them back, but he didn't—"

"_One of them?_" the grave robber demanded. "What do you mean, 'one of them'?"

The heiress recoiled at the look on the robber's face but didn't lose her nerve. "He said—he told me three were alive under the earth, but I would only have enough time to save one of them. The rest are dead by now, suffocated."

"What about Paracelsus?"

The heiress' face showed only blank incomprehension.

"_The plague doctor. Paracelsus_," the grave robber growled. "Why the crusader? Why not her?"

"We—a plague doctor of similar skill arrived on the stage coach only two weeks ago, and she has all the same abilities—"

"She isn't Paracelsus! Nobody that arrives on the coach will be Paracelsus! What are we to you? Servants? Chess pieces? _Toys_ that can be broken and cast aside as you scavenge a dead man's secrets?" She began advancing towards the heiress. "_We are people_. We have names. We bleed, we suffer, we—"

The crusader drew his sword and leveled it in front of the grave robber, both warning her and barring her way. The robber stared down at the blade for a moment, then looked back up at the heiress. Her eyes blazed with fury and grief and unshed tears. "We love," she said, voice cracking.

"There was only enough time to save one—_barely_ enough time to save one," the heiress said quickly. "Can't you understand? I had to choose."

"You chose wrong, you cunt."

The grave robber stormed away with her fists clenched, snatching up her hat and jamming it onto her head as she left. Dismas watched her go, then turned back to Reynauld as the crusader started to sheath his sword. All of a sudden, though, he let go of the handle and let it fall to the ground, then began clawing at the chinstrap of his helmet. He wrenched it off his head and threw it to the side, and Dismas was relieved to see that his face was normal: the skin was a tad pale but un-decayed and otherwise healthy, and his eyes were their usual brown color.

The crusader fell to his knees and started to vomit.

Dark brown slime streamed from his open mouth, and the stench of rot was strong enough that Dismas could feel his gorge rising in sympathy. He swallowed hard several times, forcing it back down, and then swallowed again when he saw that the pile of vomit was writhing with fat white maggots.

At the heiress' gesture the caretaker went and fetched a bucket of water from the hamlet's well, and Reynauld rinsed out his mouth once he had finished emptying his stomach. Dismas watched him carefully, and saw that his movements were natural: coordinated, certain, without the sort of hesitation that might suggest he no longer understood how to interact with his surroundings.

"Reynauld?" he tried again, in a small, vain hope. Perhaps now that… that _carrion_ was gone from inside him he would be able to talk.

But the crusader ignored him, and turned away to put his helmet back on and sheathe his sword. Dismas watched his armor glint in the weakening autumn sunshine and felt a deep, wrenching ache in his chest that threatened to rise up in his throat and choke him.

"Can you speak, crusader?" the heiress demanded.

Reynauld turned towards her. He stood with feet planted shoulder-width apart and one hand on the hilt of his sword, looking strong and confident—but also remaining silent.

The heiress waited, staring into the holes of his visor, then sighed and looked away. She wiped at a smear of dirt along her cheekbone and patted at her hair in a useless attempt to neaten it.

"Very well," she said. "Go with the highwayman to the sanitarium. And you," she said, looking at Dismas, "Have the sisters look him over for anything… odd."

The highwayman shrugged, picking up his overcoat and pulling it on. "Fine," he said, deliberately not looking at her as he spoke. _She doesn't know our names either, even though we've been with her from the beginning._

When Dismas looked up again, however, he saw the heiress accepting the mantle that the caretaker held out for her, her thin, pale hands shaking as they tied the red cord at her throat. It didn't look as though she had heard the highwayman's acknowledgement; her sunken, feverish eyes had become distant, her focus returned to whatever Hell the ancestor was whispering to her from.

And then she looked at him, those eyes momentarily sharpening to the world around her and catching hold of his, and Dismas saw something in their depths. He was too much a veteran to flinch or recoil, but his fingers made an involuntary twitch towards the hilt of his dirk.

Reynauld's gauntlet clamped down on his forearm, his grip like an iron vise.

"Hey, c'mon—relax," Dismas said, frowning and looking up at the crusader's visor. "You know I'd never stab her."

But Reynauld didn't release him until the highwayman's hand eased away from the dirk, and by then the heiress and the caretaker were sweeping out of the graveyard. Dismas grimaced at Reynauld and rubbed his forearm, but the crusader didn't rise to the bait, scoff, and make a dry remark about Dismas apparently feeling too delicate to go on the next mission. He merely stood there, silent and unmoving. The highwayman swallowed a sigh.

"Well, let's go," he said. "Time for you to get poked and prodded by nuns."


	2. Chapter 2

The sanitarium smelled like bedpans and bitter herbs when Dismas walked through the tall, imposing double doors, his booted footsteps echoing loudly against the flagstones. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his overcoat to protect them from the building's chill, which persisted even at the height of summer. Now, in autumn with frost lacing the windows each morning, the sisters had reluctantly conceded to the season by allowing a small fire in the hearth of the central hall. It was enough to boil the lice out of clothing and brew whatever nefarious tinctures and decoctions the sisters used in their treatments, but not much more, and its warmth didn't reach the far ends of the rows of beds lining the room.

"Blessings of the Light be upon you," a sister murmured, seeming to materialize out of the shadows at Dismas' elbow. The highwayman was careful not to flinch.

"And on you," Dismas said, mindful of the crusader's silent presence behind him. Reynauld had always been polite to the sisters, seeing them as fellow devotees of the Light despite the... eccentricities in their worship. He had even _defended_ them to Dismas.

Beneath the cowl of her habit, the sister's face was as pallid and bloodless as new-fallen snow, her features delicate and precise. She reminded Dismas of a moonflower—or a mushroom growing deep in a lightless cave. Her eyes were oddly pale, as though all the color had been washed out. They hardened, and her mouth thinned.

"Any blessing uttered by your sinful mouth is naught but profanity, thief," she said, "speak only what you require, and then leave this holy place."

Reynauld had never defended _Dismas_ to the sisters, however. The highwayman swallowed a sigh.

"The crusader is back from the dead and won't talk. Find out what's wrong with him."

"...You are not amusing."

Dismas shrugged. "S'truth," he said.

The sister narrowed her eyes at him, then turned to the crusader. "Remove your helmet, sir," she ordered.

_Oh, so he's a 'sir', is he?_ Dismas thought as the crusader obeyed. The sight of his face still twisted Dismas' heart, however, and he had to resist the urge to step protectively in front of the man as the sister came close to him and peered up into his face. After several seconds she moved away again.

"You are Reynauld, who died two months ago," she said. Her face was unreadable. "I must speak with the Mother Superior. Wait here."

She faded back into the shadows of the hall, and Dismas could barely make out a silhouette vanishing into a stone corridor. He grunted and folded his arms over his chest, watching the crusader out of the corner of his eye. Was it truly Reynauld who had come back from the dead? The Scriptures spoke of resurrection, but the abnormalities surrounding the hamlet weren't caused by a divine influence.

Or were they? Was the Light in fact Darkness, in its heart of hearts? A man could go mad wondering. Dismas scuffed his boot along the floor and watched the crusader stare into the flames of the meager fire, its flickering, uneven light illustrating the hollowness of his face and the tiredness in his eyes. He kept one hand on the hilt of his longsword, his thumb slowly circling the cross carved into the pommel. That had been Reynauld's habit, long ago.

Dismas took one step closer, then another, then hesitated when he was an arm's length away from the crusader. His heart seemed to beat against his ribs like the wings of a wild bird against the bars of a cage.

"Are you truly Reynauld?" he asked softly, "or are you something else?"

The crusader turned his head to look at him, a reflection of the flames twisting and contorting in his eyes, and it was Dismas who shuddered and looked away first.

The sister's return was almost welcome. This time, Dismas was listening for the whisper of her sandals against the flagstones, and was able to turn towards the sound and see her coming before she reached them. Behind her shuffled a stooped, wizened crone wearing a nun's habit who was presumably the Mother Superior of the sanitarium. Her face was just as bloodlessly white as the sister's, and peering out from a mass of wrinkles were a pair of disconcertingly pale eyes on either side of a hooked nose.

She shuffled to Reynauld and croaked, "kneel, sir, and remove your right gauntlet."

Reynauld turned to her, removed his right gauntlet, and knelt.

The Mother Superior examined the crusader's face for several tense seconds, her claw-like fingers fluttering over his skin like the wings of moths. Dismas's own skin crawled just looking at it. She examined his gums and the inside of his eyelids, checked his pulse at wrist and throat, held a chilled mirror in front of his mouth to watch his breath fog it, and finally nicked his wrist with a tiny scalpel to see the color and consistency of his blood.

"You are alive," she pronounced at last, "but you suffer from dyscrasia, also known as an imbalance of the humors. You are too phlegmatic and must become more sanguine." She turned to Dismas now. "Give him warm, rich food, and wine, and take him among young people to lift his spirits. Maybe then he will speak. If not, bring him here, and we may... perform certain procedures."

"Alright," Dismas said, nodding. The Mother Superior gave him a stern look, then swept away into the shadows of the room to check on other patients. Reynauld stood up and pulled his gauntlet back on.

"I pray you walk in the path of the Light," the sister murmured, unsubtly herding the two men towards the door. Dismas let her do so, but deliberately walked more slowly than was his wont. He made sure the door swung shut with a slam behind them.

"Well, that was certainly pleasant," he remarked, feeling a knot in his shoulders loosen now that he was once more breathing clean air beneath the sun.

Reynauld donned his helmet and buckled the chinstrap, saying nothing.

"You can't wear that to the tavern, now can you? C'mon," Dismas said, walking down the narrow, crooked street and hoping Reynauld would follow. The highwayman let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when he heard Reynauld's footsteps behind him, and led the way towards the blacksmith's forge and shop.

The hamlet was, as usual, quiet. People went about their business in the shadow of the accursed manor house, trying to lead normal lives while sandwiched between the horrors of the cove, the weald, and the warrens. Some avoided looking at the highwayman and crusader. Others stared openly, with either pity or disgust lurking in their eyes. Dismas stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a jaunty tune as he walked, pretending to take no notice. He avoided a group of children playing with wooden swords, took a quick glance at the baubles in the nomad's wagon, and waved a greeting to the blacksmith as they approached.

"Hullo," Tobold the smith said. "The heiress sent you, adventurer?"

Dismas ignored the question. "Can you hammer out that dent?" he asked instead, gesturing at the crushed portion of the crusader's cuirass. Tobold sucked in a breath through his teeth when he saw the damage, and thoughtfully rubbed the scruff on his chin.

"It'll take at least a day," he said, looking the crusader over, "and the rest of his gear needs work as well; I can see the rust starting at the joints."

Two months under the cold, damp earth had done Reynauld's armor no favors. "Put it all on the heiress' tab, then," Dismas said.

"Done," Tobold said. "Hand it over."

Dismas leaned back against the counter. "You heard the man," he said. "Strip."

Slowly, with obvious reluctance, Reynauld began unfastening his armor. Dismas' hands itched to help him, remembering the ends of days not so long ago when it had been his habit to help the crusader out of his gear before crawling into bed beside him. Now he hesitated to touch him, and ultimately decided it was better to keep his distance.

Bereft of his armor and blinking owlishly in the wan sunlight, Reynauld looked smaller. He placed each piece—helmet, hauberk, cuirass, gauntlets, greaves, cuisses, rerebraces, vambraces, sabatons, gorget, all the names Dismas had bothered to learn for his sake—on the counter, where Tobold clucked his tongue over the state of them.

"I can restore all of these to their previous state," the smith said, "but it won't be cheap."

Dismas shrugged; it wasn't his money. "Do it," he said, then looked at Reynauld. The crusader looked back at him, as stoic as a man facing the executioner's block.

"Right," the highwayman said, "Let's go to the tavern."


End file.
